And I’m only 24 days late!
But I think (maybe) I’ve maybe up for it by having 142 words this year!

Lexember2015:

1stSéko – mouth; rumor; a gossipséko – to spread rumors; to gossip

2ndKset – noise; soundkseté – to make a noise; to make a sound; to be noisy (n-verb)Ngiks – annoyance from sound (from reduplicated participle of kseté – ngikseté)

3rdNete – parent (mother or father); parents; from the verb nete – to bear children

4thbilhe – to pee; to urinate; to poop; to vomit; to fart; to burp; to sneeze (generally to relieve a bodily function; to specificy an elative object is used, which is never used in polite company; a nondescript ‘passive’ is used: tov robilhe – 3.neut-acc must-relieve.prs

nouns used are often derived from a general noun plus the bodily function morpheme –bu:

5thuma – to be sober; not drunk; clear of mind etc.umar – sober, not drunk; clear of mind; impartial; objective (this is one of the few adjectives that is not derived from the stative verb by the mechanics that govern the majority of stative verbs when used attributively, that is, it’s not an N-verb or an S-verb, which describe the ending that the stative verb takes when used attributively in an adjective like way)

14thmlase – to invite someone’s attendanceMëmlasen – inviteeMlase – the act of invitationMlaseb – a physical token of invitation (such as a card) (mlase+b, deriv. suffix that derives nouns that aid in the accomplishment of the verb)mëmlase – (s-verb) to be welcoming; to be prone to inviting people over; to be hospitable

15thGloska – stomach (the internal organ, not the abdomen in general); digestion; curiositymires Gloskav oido – to be curious (lit. to have a big stomach)

16thLagor – fitness; exercise; diet; attempts to be healthy;Lagorv cydo – to work out, to exercise, to be on a diet, to be health-conscious (lit. to hold fitness)

17thgola – to huntNgagolan – big game that is frequently huntedngagola – to be a hunterGoléir – hunting permission; right to hunt

20thChilh – a spice used mainly in meat dishes and an alcoholic tea that is drunk during the winter, similar to cinnamon, but with a bit of a black-pepper quality; the name for the alcoholic tea mentioned above

21stsi – to heal; to restore to healthSisis – doctor; the field of medicine; hospitalChyn – medicine; remedy; curative (from an archaic word for herb (replaced by Naba); traces of which is now exclusively present in the word for berry bush Nolchyn (red-bush). The berry, Nol, is used to make wine (also called Nol). This superficial relationship between Nolchyn and Chyn has lead to the wives’ tale that mass consumption of wine at the onset of a cold cures it.

22nd
para – to believe something based on faith (God, the goodness of a person, etc.)rize – to believe something based on an empirical evidence (evolution, Global warming)

25thbrusku – to fly through the air (not metaphorically extended to swiftness)Arani – birdËknak – flying insectsIbruska – fascination with flight; someone who is prone to day dreaming

26thMras –edge of land water that is not potable (oceans, brackish water, bogs); seashore; shore; coastDola –edge of land and water that is potable (rivers, streams, lakes), bank, shoreGirn – bog; acidic standing water, forms peat, mossy, feed by rain so they are low in nutrientsUlgos – fen; alkaline, fed by ground water often, richer than bogs, also form peat Kacma – swamp; woody plantsAnéng – marsh; herbaceous plantsGom – ocean/sea; large salty body of water; can be landlocked or notPvas – lake; large fresh body of water; with tributaries; landlockedOkuoi – pond, puddle (standing body of water without tributaries)Iciv – stream/brook/creek (linear body of water that can be crossed without swimming or with water going above the waist), smaller than CrasdoCrasdo – river (linear body of water that must be swum across or where the water is substantially deeper than the waist)molhi – to ford, to cross a river by wading, to wadeMolhik – a ford, a natural crossing of a riverImmal – bridge (from i+minal (lit. go over) > iminal > im(i)nal > imnal > immal)

The first paragraph from Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz:Dorothy lives in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles.

This post delves a bit more into the culture of the people who speak Mychai than previous posts might. It’s about familial relationship terms.

Mostly Mychai isn’t too surprising here. There’s a word for father (Asag), mother (Mrem), brother (En), sister (Ler), son (Ksro) and daughter (Dhuil). There are also words for maternal grandmother and grandfather versus paternal grandmother and grandfather (I haven’t fully solidified these though. So these terms are all quite simple.

Where things get a little unusual is when you get into extended relationships. While cousins (cross or otherwise) are simple, Rebe for males and Rab for females, what you call your aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews, parents-in-law and children-in-law, depends on you. More specifically, your sex.

And by that I mean that your sex determines the word you use for your relationship with that person. Let’s start with the words a male uses (and since I’m male, that doesn’t seem too sexist a place to start): If I am referring to my niece or daughter-in-law*, I use the same word for daughter: Dhuil. While my nephews are Loce. Now, for the generation older than me, for my aunts and my mother-in-law*, I use the same word for mother: Mrem. But for my uncles, I use Cuem.

All that’s easy enough. Now for the women:
For their nephews and sons-in-law, they use the same term for son: Ksro. And for the nieces, Loce. Wait…Loce means niece here, but up there it meant nephew… Yes, that’s right. The actual meaning of Loce is dependent on the sex of the speaker. Perhaps a better translation of the word for be “my siblings child of the same sex as me”. Okay, that’s simple enough, and maybe you can see where this is going. For a female, her uncles and father-in-law are the word for father, Asag, while her aunts are Cuem. So Cuem works much like Loce in that it can mean aunt or uncle depending on the sex of the speaker (or person who is in the relationship, more accurately). A better translation of this might be “my parents sibling who is the same sex as me”.

Now, why does this system exist? Perhaps it’s because for the speakers of Mychai they attribute a heavy cultural significance to cross-sex relationships between the generations, and so words the convey closeness are used. Or maybe it’s because there is a huge cultural taboo from having sex with family members that closely related so the words used up the ick factor. Who can tell? Certainly not the inventor.

*I haven’t quite worked out the terms you use for in-laws who are the same sex as the speaker, so that’s still pending.

So, it’s been a while… Nearly a year. Sorry, but grad school is busy. Anyway, here’s a new Wednesday Word…on a Tuesday. I’ll get back to a regular schedule soon.

Previously, in the post on mar, I mentioned the particle/adverb mim*. I’m calling this an irresultative, but it’s also got some more subtle things wrapped up into it. (See here for another example of such a thing, though independently conceived.)

To translate mim, at least generally, it conveys a meaning like “tried to” to the verb. When mim is used, the action or state described by the verb is in some way not satisfied to its prototypical fullness. This can be a marker of (most obviously) failure to complete the action:

It can indicate that the action was completed but that the speaker was not satisfied with the outcome:Mal ksir mim aidau.
mal ksir mim aid-au
we each.other try.to kiss-PST.PFVWe tried to kiss each other. (Like the above examples)
but it could also have the meaning:We kissed, but there was no chemistry.

*The matching with the thematic vowel of the verb no longer applies to this word. So all instances are simply mim.

Today’s post delves a bit more into the grammar of Mychai than the previous few posts did. It’s all about reflexive and reciprocal expressions (see Middle voice); how they’re similar to English, and how they’re different.

First off, let’s cover how to make singular reflexive expressions along the lines of John shaved (himself), where in English the reflexive pronoun can be dropped and you still assume John is shaving himself and not someone else.

So, back to that reflexive particle: ksir and zir are often interchangeable in the singular, and largely either can be used. However, some dialects disallow ksir in singular expressions. Recently, the Seren dialect of Mychai (this reminds me, that I ought to put up some maps) has developed shades of meaning between ksir and zir in the singular, namely that ksir expresses something being done due to an external pressure (the agent was convinced to do something or forced to do something to themselves), while zir expresses that the agent has full agency in the action.

In the plural, however, there is a clearer distinction between ksir and zir. Zir is used for reflexive expressions, while ksir is used for reciprocal actions. In this way, ksir can be understood as meaning each other or one another.

Importantly, not all expressions in English that use reflexive pronouns are covered by the middle voice markers (ksir/zir). Intensive expressions such as I myself cut the grass, where the subject is being focused is primarily done through shifting word order in Mychai.

Also, anticausative expressions, such as the German Die Tür öffnet sich (The door opens) or English The window broke, are done simply through omission of a subject.

An additional meaning of the ksir/tsir particles is that of together or jointly.